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I have some old bretonnian t are embossed with raised features of bulls heads, lions etc. The detailing is very fine on them and I am finding it hard to paint the raised areas (also there are a lot of them and so it is rather time consuming). I was wondering if there was an easy way of applying paint to the raised areas (other than just painting them as per normal)?

You mean, besides drybrushing? (the most common method with 100's of tutorials on YouTube if you're interested). Or do you want to genuinely paint them carefully by hand?

You could use a lighter shade of the colour you want it to be, and then use a wash to bring out the details. If they still aren't defined enough, gloss varnish then pin washing might help.

Standard wash and dry brush for me, unless you want to paint them extremely detailed. Using different colors of wash and dry brush color will help break it up, but is really quick and easy.

I had thought of dry brushing but I am not sure if it will work in this case. I have a red base and want to put metallic silver on the raised bits which have a fair amount of flat space on top of them (hence I am not certain if the drybrushing will go on the sides of the raised areas but leave the top unpainted).

Work the angles.
There is a technique called 'overbrushing' so look into that a little.
Essentially it's painting with the side of a larger brush with wet paint as opposed to using the tip.
You have to work on the best angles and directions of strokes depending on the shapes you are painting.
Top tip: Try turning the model to better get the angles that make your life easier.
Don't be too precious, it's often quicker to do a bit of clean up rather than painting super carefully from the out set. Colour selection can really help with your clean up too, try and pick paints that cover with one or two coats over each other in any order, or colours that can be washed with the same colour to 'clean up' any mistakes.
Another nice way to fix mistakes is with a bit of weathering if appropriate.
Hope this makes sense.

What Alex said. If you position the model and the brush properly, it becomes much more difficult to hit the flat surface below the raised detail and you can basically just trace along the shapes.